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Teacher professionalism in England may be considered to have been shaped by the set of professional standards, and the accompanying statutory performance management system, introduced by the Labour government in 2007. More recently the coalition government’s 2010 White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, announced reforms that will potentially re-shape teacher professionalism. In this article I examine the ‘shape’ of teacher professionalism in England, as defined by the professional standards. I reveal it to be a lop-sided shape, indicating a professionalism that focuses predominantly on teachers’ behaviour, rather than on their attitudes and their intellectuality. Presenting my conceptual analysis of professionalism, and examination of its link with professional development, I consider whether—and to what extent—teacher professionalism may in fact be shaped by government-imposed reform. I conclude that ‘enacted’ professionalism may be quite different from ‘demanded’ professionalism, and shaping professionalism involves a complex and indecipherable process that is better understood by examining the process whereby individuals develop professionally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a growing consensus that existing arrangements for policy making in education are far from optimal. This paper is about policy making and the roles of—and relationships between—elected officials, civil servants and academics in the making of policy. It aims to open up a conversation about new ways of making education policy that make better use of academic expertise by shedding light on policy making from the perspective of a former policy broker. With specific reference to England, experiences of the world of policy are drawn on to provide an account of the following: the disconnect between academic research and policy; what good policy advice looks like; and, most significantly, what an expert policy advice mechanism in education could look like. The mechanism put forward is one possibility for further discussion within the academic community in the first instance: an independent group of diverse academic experts to provide trustworthy and transparent policy advice to the education ministry. It is envisaged that by bringing a set of insights together here, understandings of the world of policy making will be enhanced and further thinking and conversations about mechanisms for expert policy advice in education will be induced, starting with this flagship journal's readership. The subsequent accumulation of these discussions may then, in time, lead us towards better policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a longitudinal study in the North of England with 13 educators in schools, colleges and universities during two lockdowns. The project was designed to 'unlock' education by providing spaces to co‐create new ways of thinking about education in light of the Covid‐19 pandemic. Focus groups were conducted with school and college teachers as well as university staff at the end of the first and second English lockdowns, in summer 2020 and spring 2021. An initial analysis identified issues with expectations and communication between educators and executive management as well as a lack of agency of educators, and how participants framed them as impacting on their identity as educators. Therefore, the framework of tactics of intersubjectivity was adopted to explore how educators discursively positioned themselves and others through constructions of similarity and difference, realness and power, and how their professional identities were affected by the experience of working through the pandemic and by those around them. Whilst educators took opportunities to authenticate their identity and reimagine education, their agency was undermined by top‐down governing involving little successful communication, leading to denaturalising and illegitimising experiences for educators. Executive management were perceived as lacking engagement with staff and understanding of the implications of their decisions on them. The findings call for relationship building and recognition of educators' voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ideas about mental health, wellbeing and school education to illustrate important issues in the relationship between mental health and education. The Covid crisis has amplified the pre‐existing mental health problems of children and young people in England and recognition of the opportunities in schools to address these. The paper gives an overview of child and adolescent mental health services and how they position the role of schools. It examines prominent concepts of mental health and their relationship to wellbeing, setting this in a discussion of 'mentally healthy' schools, mental health in special educational needs and whole‐school approaches. This analysis shows how the relationship between mental health and wellbeing has not been adequately worked out, using this as the basis for arguing for the dual‐factor mental health model which separates mental illness/disorder from wellbeing as two related dimensions. The paper then translates the dual‐factor model into a two‐dimensional framework that represents the distinctive but related aims of school education (wellbeing promotion) and mental health services (preventing, coping, helping mental health difficulties). This framework involves a complex conception of wellbeing, with schools playing an important role in promoting wellbeing (beyond emotional wellbeing), tiered models and establishing school‐wide social emotional learning. It is about a whole‐school curriculum approach that involves considering what is to be learned and how it is taught. It contributes to a more nuanced concept of wellbeing that has a place for meaningful learning and challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between‐class attainment groups ('setting') in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top set performed significantly better than pupils in the middle and bottom sets in both English and mathematics. The findings indicate a widening gap in attainment, especially in the case of English. Findings, especially in the case of mathematics, provide more evidence of a relative benefit for pupils placed in top sets than a relative detriment for those in bottom sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of evidence to inform educational effectiveness has received increasing attention internationally in the last two decades. An important contribution to evidence-informed policy has been greater attention to experimental trials including randomised controlled trials ( RCTs). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of evidence, particularly the use of evidence from experimental trials, to inform national curriculum policy. To do this the teaching of grammar to help pupils' writing was selected as a case. Two well-regarded and influential experimental trials that had a significant effect on policy, and that focused on the effectiveness of grammar teaching to support pupils' writing, are examined in detail. In addition to the analysis of their methodology, the nature of the two trials is also considered in relation to other key studies in the field of grammar teaching for writing and a recently published robust RCT. The paper shows a significant and persistent mismatch between national curriculum policy in England and the robust evidence that is available with regard to the teaching of writing. It is concluded that there is a need for better evidence-informed decisions by policy makers to ensure a national curriculum specification for writing that is more likely to have positive impact on pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the international problem of 'early school leaving', this paper explores the issue of sustained participation in upper secondary education in England. It focuses in particular on the position of middle attainers, who constitute a large proportion of the cohort and whose progress will be vital in realising the government's goal of 'Raising the Participation Age' to 18 by 2015. The paper draws on evidence from national research undertaken as part of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training in England and Wales and analysis of New Labour and Coalition policy between 2000-2012. It uses a three-year local study of 2400 14- and 16-year-olds in an established school/college consortium to illustrate the effects of policy and practice on middle attainers. We argue that this important group of young people was 'half-served' by New Labour, because of its incomplete and contradictory 14-19 reforms, and is now being 'overlooked' by Coalition policy because of its emphasis on high attainers. We conclude by suggesting a range of measures to support the 14+ participation, progression and transition of middle attainers in the English education and training system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policy-makers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policy-makers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we attempt to critically 'make visible the flow and circulation of data' through analysing the datafication of the early years education sector in England (children aged 2-5). The concept of datafication is used to understand the processes and impacts of burgeoning data-based governance and accountability regimes. This analysis builds upon early childhood researchers who were influenced by Foucault and others, who have noted the ways in which the surveillance and performative culture of accountability both affirms, legitimates and seduces through discourses of quality while increasingly regulating and governing the early years. Using data from three research sites (a children's centre, a primary school and a combined nursery school and children's centre) as well as an interview with a local authority early years advisor, we examine how comparative data-based accountability increasingly governed early years teachers' professionalism and pedagogies. We argue that the planned tracking of children's performance from baseline assessment at four years old to eleven years old may further govern and constrain early years professionalism as young children are reconfigured as 'miniature centres of calculation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a description of the background characteristics and attainment profile of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) in England, and of those missing a value for this variable. Free school meal eligibility is a measure of low parental income, widely used in social policy research as an individual indicator of potential disadvantage. It is routinely treated as context for judging both individual and school‐level attainment, as an indicator of school composition, and has been proposed as the basis for the pupil premium funding policy for schools. Knowledge of the quality, reach and limitations of FSM as an indicator is therefore fundamental to accurate decision‐making in a number of important areas. This paper uses a national dataset of all pupils (PLASC) for 2007. It looks at the relationship between different indicators of pupil background and attainment to help decide how useful FSM remains in relation to its suggested alternatives, and how to handle the crucial question of missing data and to describe more fully than previously the national picture of who is eligible for free school meals. The results show that, while the distinction between take‐up and eligibility has been eroded, FSM remains a useful and clear stratifying variable for pupil attainment patterns in school, linked to type of school attended, school mobility, living in care, special needs, first language and minority ethnic group. The pupils missing FSM values fall into two groups, based largely on their type of school and how long they have been there. One group attends fee‐paying schools and is most similar to non‐FSM pupils elsewhere and could be aggregated with them in future analyses that do not want to omit them. The remaining missing FSM pupils form a deprived and perhaps super‐deprived group. These should not be omitted, nor assumed to be like non‐FSM pupils, as currently happens in official school performance figures in England in a way that disadvantages schools with very deprived intakes. The proposal here is that missing FSM pupils in state‐funded institutions should be treated in future as a third distinct group. If these issues about missing data are resolved, and other limitations accepted, FSM remains a better indicator of low socioeconomic status than the current alternatives discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English primary schools are considered quasi-collegial institutions within which staff communicate regularly and openly. The activities of staff, however, are bound by institutional norms and conditions and by societal expectations. Wider agendas of governmental control over the curriculum and external controls to ensure accountability and learning standards have influenced the development and purposes of middle leaders’ roles. This is a conceptual paper that explores issues around the agency of primary school middle leaders within a wider context of the political and educational agenda. Through a reconsideration of research conducted by one of the authors since the inception of the notion of ‘subject leaders’, we exemplify ways in which primary school middle leaders’ attitudes have developed and changed over the past 15 years. In this paper we identify attitudes to leadership, the influence of distributed leadership on primary school role-holders and possible ways forward for middle leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on interview data from national policy makers in England, Scotland and the European Commission to illustrate differences in the referencing of 'Europe' in education policy-making in England and Scotland in order to highlight the emergent complexity of post-devolution policy-making in education through a focus on relations and interactions with Europe, as expressed in the negotiation and development of performance data systems. We suggest that policy-makers in England reference global influences, rather than Europe, while policy-makers in Scotland reference Europe in order to project a new positioning of Scotland in closer alignment with Europe. Europeanisation in education thus produces differing policy responses from closely aligned, indeed, in the case of England and Scotland, contiguous policy spaces. Thus the paper seeks to contribute to the literature on 'travelling' education policy and its 'local' mediation and to connect the development of devolution and the changing policy space of education in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widening participation has opened higher education ( HE) to diverse learners, but in doing so has created challenges negotiating situations of disadvantaged positioning compared with peers conforming more closely to the ideal 'bachelor boy' student. As one of the most financially vulnerable groups of students, lone parents occupy a doubly precarious position negotiating the challenges, including financial constraints, of both university participation and raising children alone. Their experiences of HE participation are particularly important to understand as increasing financial precariousness of both studentship and lone parenthood squeezes them further through concurrent rising university fees and welfare cuts. This paper draws on insights from longitudinal qualitative research with 77 lone mothers in England to explore the negotiation of social and economic risks and rewards involved in their undertaking of a debt-financed higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing the demand for higher education has been a major concern of successive UK governments over the last 30 years. While initially they sought to increase demand, latterly the emphasis has been on widening participation to include demographic groups among which it has traditionally been low. There had long been an academic and policy interest in the drivers of demand, but an appreciation of the contrasting patterns between different geographical areas was relatively late to emerge. Little research has thus far focused on the extent to which demand within an area is a function of background factors with a spatial dimension. For example, while it is known that demand tends to be lower in deprived areas, it is not well understood what specific features of deprivation cause this. This paper reports the findings of a quantitative study using linear regression modelling to determine which localised factors played a significant role in the demand for higher education between 2004 and 2009 in English local authority areas. It concludes that attainment at 16, the proportion of working-age graduates and the ethnic profile are major explanatory variables, but that the nature of the local employment market also plays a role in explaining changes over time. Coinciding with other significant changes in the education sector, the abolition of the Aimhigher initiative in July 2011 marked the return of demand management back to individual universities, so the importance of spatial patterns in higher education demand are likely to be of renewed importance in coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon findings of a four-year national research project on variations in the work and lives of teachers in England, this paper provides empirical evidence which contributes to understandings about the importance of resilience in teachers' work. The experience of resilience as perceived by teachers in this research was that it was neither innate nor stable and was much more than a capacity to survive and thrive in extremely adverse circumstances. Rather, it was perceived as being closely allied to their everyday capacity to sustain their educational purposes and successfully manage the unavoidable uncertainties which are inherent in the practice of being a teacher. Their capacity to be resilient fluctuated as a result of the influences of the personal, relational and organisational settings in which they worked. The findings have implications for initial and in-service professional development programmes, school leadership and the quality retention of teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a study commissioned by the (then) Department for Children, Schools and Families. The research mapped the provision, and explored the impact, of supplementary schools and aimed specifically to develop further understanding as to how supplementary schools might raise the attainment of Black and Minority Ethnic pupils. Drawing on a national survey and case study data from 12 supplementary schools, we highlight a range of perceived impacts identified by teachers, pupils and parents and problematise the concept of impact. We identify the unique contribution and impact that supplementary schools make to the mainstream school attainment of pupils from diverse (linguistic, cultural, ethnic) backgrounds. We suggest that there is much to be learnt by the mainstream school sector about the difference supplementary school education makes to minority ethnic children, while questioning whether mainstream indicators of impact should be applied to supplementary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a Gini-type index for measuring ‘attainment equity’ in schools; that is to say, how far a school (or group of schools) is from having a ‘fair’ proportion of its examination success attributable to a fair proportion of its student population. Using data from the National Pupil Database, the Index is applied to more than 20,000 students with matched attainment records at KS2 and KS4 in two ‘statistical-neighbour’ local authorities in England, capturing the extent to which they are meeting a public policy notion of equity. It is then combined with existing contextual value added measures to analyse school and local authority performance in terms of both attainment equity and context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policy in England increasingly stresses the importance of enjoyment in education, both as a right in itself and as an essential support for learning. This paper draws on a large national dataset to focus on the perspective of young people aged 14-19 in England in 2007-2008. It considers alternative ways in which enjoyment and learning might be conceptualised. It analyses the evidence from young people to explore their experience of enjoyment at school or college and their perception of its relationship to learning. It concludes that the form of enjoyment most strongly perceived as enmeshed with learning is the least commonly experienced; and that policy that refers to 'enjoyment' as a general and undefined term fails to distinguish particular affective states that may or may not be supportive of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an analysis of the educational attainment and progress between age 11 and age 14 of over 14,500 students from the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. The mean attainment gap in national tests at age 14 between White British and several ethnic minority groups was large, more than three times the size of the gender gap, but at the same time only about one-third of the size of the social class gap. Socioeconomic variables could account for the attainment gaps for Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students, but not for Black Caribbean students. Further controls for parental and student attitudes, expectations and behaviours indicated minority ethnic groups were on average more advantaged on these measures than White British students, but this was not reflected proportionately in their levels of attainment. Black Caribbean students were distinctive as the only group making less progress than White British students between age 11 and 14 and this could not be accounted for by any of the measured contextual variables. Possible explanations for the White British-Black Caribbean gap are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new analysis of segregation between schools in terms of pupils living in poverty, for all secondary schools in England from 1996 to 2005. This shows that the clustering of similar pupils in specific schools increased noticeably from 1996 to 2001, but then settled at a level still below that of 1989 when official records began. The analysis uses four estimates of segregation using figures for take-up of, and eligibility for, free school meals compiled to create both the dissimilarity index and what has been termed the Gorard index of segregation. All four estimates give the same substantive results and the findings for the dissimilarity index and the Gorard index of segregation using either measure of free school meals are indistinguishable. The two indices are, therefore, measuring the same thing. However, the Gorard index of segregation is again shown to be more tolerant of the precise measure being used and so more strongly composition invariant than the dissimilarity index. This has important implications both for the past debate on how to measure segregation between schools and for how education authorities go about estimating segregation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]